deercountry | let me look at the sun

[A girl who is also a rabbit would at least give Paul pause outside of this liminal space, but here: the moon, life, death, rebirth, a litany of symbolism any half-trained child knows. So he accepts it. There are other things on his mind beyond trivial questions.]

The future. It's coming.

[His tone is despairing, his eyes still unfocused, or perhaps focused on something else. His mother huddles in the corner of the tent, her face hidden behind her hair and hands, as rivulets of water begins to trickle down the walls of the tent. It smells like tears. Paul closes his eyes, sucks air through clenched teeth, and digs his fingers into fabric of the tent's floor.]

This isn't what happens. This isn't -

[There's a sound like a distant, immense heartbeat, throbbing over the wrenching gasp that comes from Paul as his feet kick out uselessly at the floor.]

[Haru sits up, the air around her feeling thick with condensation. it's an uncomfortable sensation for someone with fur, even worse when you consider that a rabbit can't even sweat or pant. instead her long ears widen slightly, giving tell to her growing anxiety and her attempts to relieve herself from the heat that seems to build in this pocket of a tent.

it's only now that she notices the woman huddled in the corner, and Haru tries to move towards her on her hands and knees.]

H-hey, is he ok? [Who's memory is this?] I think this is just--

[she lets out a yelp the moment she hears the sound of a second heartbeat throbbing in her ears, sitting back and tugging down on her ears as she looks back towards Paul. she feels uneasy, like there's an impending doom only a few feet away, and while a burrow for a rabbit can bring some comfort, the fact that she feels trapped does the exact opposite. she wants to reach out towards this thrashing boy, who seems in the midst of throwing a fit, but her rabbit sensibilities and her sensitivity towards danger has her frozen, stock still.]

It's a memory...it can't be the future.

[she's trying to talk sense in what feels like a senseless situation.]

[The woman in the corner whimpers when Haru approaches, drawing even closer in on herself. The tent swelters; sweat runs down even the back of her hands. The air shimmers, thick with spice and brine and a whiff of rotten citrus.

Paul has felt the new magic in his blood gleam and shimmer, worked it with his will and his bloodied fingers. Like all new things, it came to him easily, readily. He is a boy with so many gifts already: why not another? And there has been no one to think to tell him otherwise.

He falls forward onto his palms and arches his back into a curve, head hanging down in front of him as a quiet keening sound rises from the back of his throat. On the back of his neck, the color of bruising blooms around the rounded knobs of his vertebrae.]

I can't - I can't stop it. I can't stop -

[The thing in the corner that is not Paul's mother, that never has been, makes a wet, choking sound in the rhythm of sobbing, or laughter.

Paul lifts his head with a sound like the cracking of new ice and looks at Haru from behind his closed eyes. His face is damp, shining, stray hair tacked to his skin, a pale carved mask.]

You know that isn't true.

So it was, [and his voice is two voices: his own, terrified one, and a grinding rasp, a voice made from sounds not meant to be a voice] so it will be.

[her back is pressed up against the sweating, breathing walls of the tent, clothes feeling soaked through from the heightening humidity. she's lost, confused and scared, and the sobbing laughter that rips through the woman-turned-something-else at the corner makes her jump near out her skin.

the threat that hangs heavy in the air of this memory isn't of a current danger; to Haru it feels more akin to the hours before a storm, where animals can sense something is wrong with no physical signs of being in danger. even still, she's grinding her teeth, body shaking and jumping when the boy's body contorts in a strange, inhuman way, the cracking of his vertebrae making her feel sick to her stomach.

her own breathing is growing heavy, his terror infectious and his second voice frightening and rough to her sensitive ears. she's braced as far back against the tent now as possible, fingers scrabbling at the wet cloth behind her.

she's at a complete loss of what to say, what to do. does he need help? is he sick? o-oh it's not like I can do anything to help him...when I can't even help myself.]

It's a memory. [it's all she can say, trying to keep her wits about her. doubling down against the instinct and urge for her eyes to roll back and faint from being overwhelmed and overheated and overstimulated with sight, sound and smells all around.] O-or a dream.

[When Haru retreats, it's as if something about her pulls - the hands underneath the boy brace into the sand as if fighting the rest of him, his body shaking like the sick and fevered animal he is. The other heartbeat is quickening, the walls of the tent bellowing in and out, hot to the touch.]

Liar. [The voices are a choir of two, overlaid and intertwining, a hiss and a plea.] It's coming. You know it.

A flood of bone and blood. A storm to end storms. The all-seeing, all-devouring open eye opening inside you, opening inside you, an opening inside you, opening the inside of you, please, please someone stop me I can't stop please-

[His eyes open, and they are full of moonlight, a gleaming pearl-white iridescence.]

Behold. The wine dark sea.

[In a cataclysm and a mercy, the walls of the tent burst inwards in a torrent of lightless seawater, dredged from the deepest wells. It curls around Haru like a vast chill hand and tumbles her for a whirling confusion of moments - and she washes up on a hillock she may recognize, along a coast she certainly will. It's the shoreline of Trench where Sleepers wash up, and yet not: the waters have risen to lap at the base of the hill Haru has been set on, the beach flooded completely. The sun is setting behind the veil of a troubled, churning grey sky. There is no sign of Paul. There is no sign of anyone, the world still like a held breath.]

[this boy is raving...it's a terrible sight to behold, and the heat in the tent is growing so suffocating, so unbearable that she wonders if simply giving in to this overwhelming feeling, let it take her over and let her pass out will get her out of this nightmare. but through his ranting comes his pleas, asking to be stopped, for someone to stop him, and Haru weathers through her own nature to move away from the edges of the tent, towards him and trying to reach out.

she can't reach him. of course she can't, and then she's drowning, both into his white-on-white eyes and in the water that comes rushing in from all sides. easily swept beyond the tent, away from unbearable heat into bone chilling cold, body aching as she struggles to swim through the current. like most things in the world, she feels at nature's mercy, only coming into contact with dry land from the will of the current and not of her own.

crawling further up the rocky knoll, she coughs up seawater. and if being trapped in a tent beneath sand in an unfamiliar place was bad enough, being stuck alone surrounded by water on the coast of Trench is even worse. she manages to stand, arms wrapped around her as she shivers from both anxiety and cold.

it's quiet...should I say something...? can I die in someone's memory like this? it feels like I can.

the silence holds for longer as she looks out towards the dying light. she can't remember what she was wearing before all this, but now she's in her old Cherryton uniform, all white and soaked through. her ears are bone straight and alert, black eyes wide and scanning the horizon for any signs of life, for any sign of the boy.]

[The wind stirs the soaked edges of Haru's uniform as it picks up, heated desert air rushing past her towards the sea. With it comes golden sand, shimmering with metallic flecks in this angle of light, heavy with the spice melange. It smells of cinnamon again, but also like comfort, the best meal Haru has ever eaten in the warmest company. A scant, false comfort, and followed by the reek of bitter lime festering in the marine stink of a seal's mouth.

The waters begin to recede, as if pushed or pulled back, and the top of a dark-haired head crests perhaps half a kilometer up the beach. Despite the distance and the tumult of air and water, as soon as the water line falls below the level of his mouth his voice, blessedly singular, is a rapid, horrified whisper that Haru will be able to hear clearly no matter what she does.]

-and so the floodwaters parted over devastation and the people cried out to their king, help us, but the king knew he had brought the waters and the storm to follow them more terrible yet, a storm of desolation and fire, and he turned his face away from the people-

[His eyes are fixed as wide as they can open in his blank face, eyelids peeled back terribly around their moon-bright emptiness. As the water laps down to his neck, the edges of articulated golden armor that fits like a second skin are revealed. But this is not all the water is revealing as it rushes back where it's meant to be.

There, the back of a man in elegant formal clothing now soaked in seawater, a tendril of seaweed draped over his shoulder. His face is hidden in his hands as he bends over a sodden bed holding a single still shape under a green shroud. He is also unmoving, fixed in place as if only an image. Not far away, a knife dripping a frozen arc of blood rises above the waves clasped in the tiny hand of a child. Beyond that, two figures with faces blurred behind their shields are in the heat of combat, a blade captured in the moment it pierces the energy shimmering at one of their neck's.

And there are more, so many more, as the water continues to draw back, cross-sections of myriad drowned horrors.]

-and he looked towards the future and saw the shape of the thing to come, the predator-breath and predator-hunger, and the king was not afraid for he knew that this was the reckoning he had called from the deep to lay waste to his enemies, and he turned to his people and said rejoice, for the devouring is upon us and the people in their ignorance cried out stop, stop, stop stop stop this isn't what happens, this isn't how it happened, we do not understand, o king, and we are afraid-

[The ocean flows faster, racing home. What does it show Haru, in these waves of things that have come, that will come, that could come? What echoes of the past reaching into the future and future reaching into the past does she see?]

[she is afraid, frozen stock-still on this island of hers, the warm desert wind smelling of fetid breath doing nothing to warm the icy chill that clings to her, deep in her bones. and as the water recedes, revealing the boy from the tent, it's an added extra pain in knowing she's too weak to leave her spot, to go out and try to pull him out from the water, stuck useless and scared where she is as his words and visions encircle her.

the devouring is upon us continues to echo as the ocean begins to show Haru memories and visions not of this boy, but of her. the predator-breath and predator-hunger is something she can feel from over her shoulder, as the crest of a wave rises and falls on top of her, warm and tinged red, seagrass clinging to her and around her.

like the arms of a predator pulling her in close, breath hot as the desert against her ear. it's a bad day for a bunny rabbit like her, the water rushing around her echoing the past sounds of a fountain on school grounds.]

Give me a reason to run away in fear... [it's said allowed, in her voice though coming from the mirror in the waves and not from her.] Give me a reason to cry out...give me a reason to live...

[Haru pushes through as the waves pull back, allowing her room to run forward, shoes lost to the quicksand-like grip the revealed ocean floor has, pulling her in to devour her, eat her, bring her home. Yet still she pushes forward, to try and reach Paul, but the ocean comes back in, a rush of seafoam-green and red blood-like algae.

for her, the future as her memory stands remains bright-red against a dark black night sky. it pools at her feet, freezing to stone and then a street, and she's suddenly alone in a crowd, bundled up in winter clothes, walking forward with large steps and stopping periodically, looking behind her as a lumbering grey wolf stalks her in the shadows.

and Haru keeps walking forward, away from the wolf as he follows, towards Paul, only for another wave to rise up, crash over her, pushing her back ashore. laying on her back, looking up, there's another animal crouching over her. a male gazelle, antlers sharp and dangerous, a medical mask covering his mouth and the teeth behind it. one clawed hand reaches around her as she remains laying there, cupping her chin, her neck. his other hand holding a bloodied box cutter beneath her ribcage.]

I was comfortable being one prey animal among five hundred million others. It was easier when I didn't have to be careful.

[she rests her hands atop the box cutter, guiding it to cut the fabric of her dress, flesh laid bare for another to consume.]

[The points of two knives sprout from the gazelle's chest like new spring shoots, then vanish with a sucking, wet tug. The body is pushed sideways, toppling to lay beside Haru's prone form, the box cutter falling to land on her chest with no guiding violence behind it.

Paul stands over her with knives held in a hand of gold and a hand of flesh, with blood smeared around his mouth to match the deep-bitten marks beneath his bare knuckles he made when he heard a voice cry out and chose to answer, and where fear was, now is fury. His eyes are still blown wide with silver, but the rest of his face is twisted in rage too awful to call anything as merciful as protective.

Don't you dare touch her, he did not say. No warnings for this, not now.]

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

[Paul doesn't bend to help her rise. He turns his back on her instead, facing out towards the sea between her and the waterline, which recedes away from him as if fleeing. He does not see the carnage revealed by its passing. He only sees the distant, rising line on the horizon, hears the long breathing in of the ocean.]

Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. [His voice is his own again, but only in the way his face is his own: a rage too great to do anything but scream or speak softly with, and he speaks softly, softly.] I will face my fear and I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

[there's blood on her face, her neck, her chest as the masked gazelle is impaled, and when the body falls and hits the ground (with a laugh, he laughs...happily) it's only her hands that hold the blade at her chest. she looks up at Paul, black eyes wide, scared despite being the one to have put herself in this situation, because it's only when she's near-death does she feel alive.

she rolls over onto her stomach, sand clinging to wet fur, wet clothes, wet from the sea and from the blood. and as he walks forward, towards the retreating ocean, she calls back out to him, an echo of an old voice:]

You don't know what it feels like, to be an animal in constant danger. [standing up, she walks towards him, the sea breeze blowing past sounding more like a train passing by. and with long strides, she does her best to catch up to him, feeling angry all of a sudden, because he's just another person staying out of reach, affecting the world around him while she's the one effected. someone above her.

she grabs at him, to hold onto his wrist of flesh and blood with a hand so small it barely wraps around. her anger subsides to something smaller, sadder, even though her grip remains as strong as it can be (which isn't...strong at all.)]

You're just a boy.

[it's her in the present who says this. not a memory, not the future. but her. ]

And it's normal...to be afraid.

[The terrible, staring eyes are unchanged when they turn on Haru again, at the touch of her gentle, encircling hand, but the rest of his face crumples like paper around them. In that moment, he is just a boy, and he's afraid.

He's always afraid. But he sees that she is, too, and the knife melts from that hand. Unselfconsciously, Paul twists his fingers to weave through hers, blood oozing from his unfelt wound to stain her beautiful fur. It's a gesture of comfort, of solidarity. He keeps his lamp-light gaze on her, as the sea begins to rush towards them.]

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

[His grip tightens, anchoring her to him, and thin silver threads flow from his shining blood to weave around their clasped hands.]

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

[Somehow, the wave already towers over them. Paul keeps his face turned away as his voice goes on, the rasping echoed other fading from it.]

Only I will remain.

[The wave falls. Paul lets his fear crash down on him with the force of mountains, and he does not let go.

It is cold, and then it is not. The beach is only a beach again, the boy only a boy, dressed in dripping sleeping-clothes, the horrors of it washed away as if they were never there. Paul smiles at Haru once, briefly - and falls to his knees with an exhale almost like a sigh. Their hands are no longer bound, but Paul will hold on until Haru finds her way free, as if he's forgotten how to let go.]

Edited 2022-01-12 20:30 (UTC)

[she responds in kind, holding his hand regardless of how much blood comes from his wounds to stain her pure-white fur. it doesn't matter, she's used to blood, used to the colour...the smell too, though it still makes her stomach clench and has her wanting to run. she's always afraid too, so much so that she's gotten used to it, powering through it, but not in the way this boy speaks of getting rid of it.

it's a part of her. it always will be.

her hand tightens on reflex as the wave behind Paul rises, casting a long and terrible shadow over them, and she screws her eyes shut the moment it falls, water beating over her, knocking the air from her, but still she holds on to him, not wanting to let go and not wanting to be lost in the middle of another vision or memory.

it's not until everything recedes do her eyes open, and she sees Paul at eye level as he drops down. instead of letting go, Haru keeps holding his hand.

it takes her a bit to gather her wits, staring at him and not sure whether they're stuck here or free to return to reality and out of this memory (assuming...they're still in his memory; she honestly can't tell).

asking him if he's okay feels stupid, but she feels like she has to say something. but what can you say after everything that's happened?]

...Haru. [her name. simple enough.] My name is Haru.

[The air shimmers with flecks of bronze carried in by a desert wind: the dream, still, but the dream calmed, returned to a semblance of true memory instead of the violent disruption of the not-yet.

Paul looks at Haru as if he's surprised she can speak. For a symbolic figment, she's persistent, and if his mind wasn't a neurotransmitter-drained static blur he would be drawing different inferences, but for now, he looks at her and wonders what else she's here for.]

Paul. [It's redundant; as part of his vision, she must know.] I didn't let you drown.

[Another foolish thing to say, but he feels as if he really is dreaming. Even though his hand dwarfs hers, holding it makes him feel younger again, as if he's back on the beaches of his childhood and not stranded on this foreign shore. He should stand up, but this a dream, and he doesn't have to, yet.]

[Haru offers a small smile in return. And after a few moments, holding his hand goes from reassuring and awkward, but still she doesn't move to remove it. Not yet, because she's worried that something will happen if she does let go.]

Thank you for that. But... [She flaps one ear, a subconscious motion, still trying to process everything that's happened. She's seen a lot, heard a lot, and she's wondering why fragments of her own memories and people she knows had shown up in the mind of someone else.] I'm not sure if I could die in someone else's dream.

It felt like I could.

[That does get Paul to let go, tentatively, unraveling their hands with caution just in case. Nothing happens. She is still here, and she called it someone else's dream.]

You're real?

[It's an inane question, but as he blinks at her it's the first he can think to ask. Saving a figment of his own fears is one thing, but the idea she is real, that this was a real person in harm's way because of his misfiring mind - it's a lot to think about, as he shivers slightly in the cold wind.]

I think you could have.

[He...didn't think she was real...?

She flexes her hand as he lets go, very much still here and very much real. Confusion is clearly legible in her eyes as she looks back at him.]

I'm...yes? [Her smile wavers, the awkward feeling expanding slightly. Here she is, shivering in the cold, her wet Cherryton uniform (what remains of it, at least) clinging to her uncomfortably, patches of red streaked across her white fur, white dress...alive...

And he thought she was a part of his dream. There's some existential dread that seeps in at that thought, and she kind of wants to pinch herself for good measure.

He thinks she could have died. Which-- she laughs, short and reactionary.]

Oh...well, then that's nothing new. I'm glad I didn't.

[Paul draws himself back up to his feet through more force of will than anything else, flexing his hand on the way up. He didn't think she was real and he still bit down to bone; he doesn't know how to reconcile that, doesn't try.]

So am I. [He's off-balance, and it makes him hesitant, his voice very careful when he continues.] I'm sorry I scared you.

[An understatement if he's ever said one. Standing up, she's tiny next to him, and he thinks about what he saw of himself, of what he saw of her, and a feeling as dark and pulling as a riptide reaches out for him. Guilt, he realizes, after a moment.]

[She steps back as he stands, not out of fear but more to have an easier time looking up at him (and for him to look down at her). He sounds careful, when he doesn't need to be.]

You don't have to apologize, it's not your fault. [She rubs her forearm, feeling self-conscious now.] This has happened to me too...other people showing up in my memories.

[Like the memories he say of hers, and what seemed to be potential futures too. That was new.

Nevermind the fact that this seemed more nightmare than memory. She wonders why.]

I know you didn't mean to hurt anyone.

[It's a funny thing for Haru to say, after he put two knives through a body hanging over her, and it catches at something in Paul's throat. He tears at his sleeve and wraps cloth around his hand instead of looking at her.]

People still get hurt. [Said quietly, and more than he meant to say.] I didn't expect that to happen.

[Or for anyone to see that he has visions. What they're of. The way that this place has tilted and distorted an already broken thing. He knows he's not the only paleblood in the city who dreams of the future, it's just - he knows his must be worse.]

Are you all right?

[Another pointless question. He's on a streak.]

[She shrugs her shoulders, not being dismissive but more signaling it's water under the bridge.]

We don't expect a lot of things to happen, but it can't be helped when they do.

[Where Haru is now, as a person and what she's been through...all have been through unexpected and random circumstances. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Accidents.

It's something she's learned to live with, shaping herself through the cards she's been dealt on the daily.]

I'm alright. Just cold. [And she crosses her arms beneath her chest at that. It is a bit of a pointless question, but since he asked her, it would feel rude to not return the acknowledgement of...everything that just happened.

What this boy had gone through.]

Are you okay?

[Paul half-opens his mouth to protest before he answers - something like, I know you aren't all right or How can you say that? - but her matter-of-fact acceptance stops him. She's fragile looking, but there's more to her than that. She walked through a nightmare to get close enough for him to hear.

So instead, he says:] I am. Thank you.

[In a final fit of idiocy, he reaches for the lapels of a coat he isn't wearing to offer it to her, then drops them. He's about to go on, when he sees a familiar antlered shape approaching from behind her. With some urgency, he looks down again.]

I don't - [he hesitates] - this isn't something I want people to know. It's a bad dream I have, sometimes, but it's - private.

[She recognizes his failed gesture, and despite everything she laughs, rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand before bending down to instead wring out the hem of her skirt. It runs a light pink into the sand, from blood left over.

When she looks back up, Paul looks serious, and in a very animal-like gesture, she tilts her head at his sudden urgency.

Ah. Well, he doesn't have to worry. She's been at the mercy of gossip, hates it. And she understands vulnerable people needing to protect their most vulnerable moments from others.]

I promise I won't tell. You'll find that I'm pretty good at keeping secrets.

[Paul can't read Haru the way he would be able to read most people. The intersection of humanoid and lapine traits make her a near-mystery. He should therefore have no grounds to believe her, no evidence to base it on. All the same, he does. It's a gut feeling, or some lingering trace of prescient sense, or both, but he does.

He smiles at her, shakily relieved, and then nods at the approaching stag.]

You should go. Get warm. [A pause, then:] I promise I won't say anything either.

[He doesn't know who he might say it to, or, truthfully, what he saw. But it was hers, a sight he wasn't meant to see, and that's reason enough.]

[It's not as though she understood half of what she saw anyway.

She smiles back, turning her head to look behind at Paul's gesture and pausing at the sight of the familiar animal. Before she touches the creature, to go in its direction and out of this memory, she looks back to Paul.]

You should go too. [A suggestion, knowing the dangers of being left alone with your thoughts for too long.

But she won't press the issue further than that; placing her hand against the stag's flank, she finally turns and disappears back into the physical world.]

let me look at the sun | open

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im so sorry my brain is so dead ;;

no worries at all! i'm very happy to see this

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